I don’t really know why they feel they need to Cave to Russian pressure here. They have all the cards. Russia will never ever stop Steam from running in Russia. If they try to cut off Counter-Strike the entire country would collapse immediately. I’m 100% serious that is not sarcasm at all.
I mean, there’s DRM but that hasn’t stopped them ever before…
Do they stand to lose something if they switch? I don’t understand CS:GO economics, maybe there is a sanction-evading money flow via weapon and skin trading on Valve’s servers?
Unlikely? There are 3rd party websites that allow liquidation, but that’s all outside of Valve’s sites. The closest you can get to liquidation officially is buying Valve hardware like a Steam Deck with your store credit, but they don’t ship steam hardware to russia.
I wasn’t saying the exchange for money happens on Valve’s servers, but it’s Valve who oversees everyone’s inventory. You could hack the game and run a third party account server and give yourself all the knives but they would not be recognized by Valve and thus worthless, unless you convince exchanges that your server is trustworthy and has assets behind it.
Ah, in terms of the Steam inventory API, it’s completely unregulated. All purchases are steam platform only, but trades between players are unmonitored (with the exception of requiring both sides to authenticate the trade).
I don’t really know why they feel they need to Cave to Russian pressure here. They have all the cards. Russia will never ever stop Steam from running in Russia. If they try to cut off Counter-Strike the entire country would collapse immediately. I’m 100% serious that is not sarcasm at all.
What’s preventing Russians from hacking Counter-Strike and making their own “Кантр-Страйк” servers?
Exactly nothing.
I mean, there’s DRM but that hasn’t stopped them ever before…
Do they stand to lose something if they switch? I don’t understand CS:GO economics, maybe there is a sanction-evading money flow via weapon and skin trading on Valve’s servers?
Unlikely? There are 3rd party websites that allow liquidation, but that’s all outside of Valve’s sites. The closest you can get to liquidation officially is buying Valve hardware like a Steam Deck with your store credit, but they don’t ship steam hardware to russia.
I wasn’t saying the exchange for money happens on Valve’s servers, but it’s Valve who oversees everyone’s inventory. You could hack the game and run a third party account server and give yourself all the knives but they would not be recognized by Valve and thus worthless, unless you convince exchanges that your server is trustworthy and has assets behind it.
Ah, in terms of the Steam inventory API, it’s completely unregulated. All purchases are steam platform only, but trades between players are unmonitored (with the exception of requiring both sides to authenticate the trade).